1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to health monitoring. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method of digital image analysis for isolating a region of interest within a tongue image and a health monitoring method and apparatus using characteristic factors detected within the region of interest within the tongue image.
2. Description of the Related Art
With overall improvements in quality of life and living conditions, interest in personal health has increased. As a result, a significant amount of home medical equipment that allows people to easily monitor their personal health has been researched and developed.
Many factors may be used to diagnose a condition of a human body. Among them, blood pressure or blood glucose is usually used due to ease of measurement. In addition to these factors, it has been recently acknowledged that a condition of a tongue may also provide significant information about a condition of an internal organ. For example, a tongue of a healthy person is pink in color and has a thin, white tongue coat. When a person's liver or a digestive organ is not functioning properly, an appearance of that person's tongue may change. For example, that person's tongue may become swollen, thin, shrink due to dryness, have a yellow or gray color, have a thick tongue coat, or be slick without any tongue coat.
However, equipment for detecting an incipient stage of an invasion of a disease and progression of the disease based on a condition of the tongue, such as a tongue coat, color, or appearance, is very expensive and is typically only found in hospitals. As such, the conventional equipment is not suitable for people to personally monitor their health.